Does analysis paralysis prevent you from managing effectively?

The ability to make decisions that are timely and powerful is a critical management skill; being overly contemplative and over-analysing a situation can be damaging as Shakespeare’s Hamlet would attest to.

So how do managers know that chosen decisions are the best ones and avoid falling into the trap of just “making a decision for the sake of it, because any decision is better than none?”

To help managers produce effective decisions there are a few simple rules:

Plan, plan, plan
A common error is reactive decision making - a situation that at best ends with a serendipitous result but more often with a poor outcome.  Planning allows for decisions to be made simply, comfortably and in an effective way.

Planning provides benefits to decisions:

• opportunity to establish independent goals through a conscious and directed series of choices
• a standard of measurement of whether there is movement towards or away from a desired result 
• finite (often limited) resources can be committed in a structured and orderly way

Do your research but avoid information overload 
Information overload can be defined as "a gap between the volume of information and the tools needed to assimilate it”; the more information overload, the worse the quality of decisions made. The overload of information can be related to problems processing and tasking, which impacts decision making.

• There are a number of factors concerning information overload and consideration of these may help focus information collection and processing:
• Personal Information characteristics - qualifications, experiences and attitudes 
• Information Characteristics - information quality, quantity and frequency 
• Tasks and Process - standardised procedures or methods for gathering information and undertaking work 
• Organisational Design - organisation processing capacity and relationship - both of which affect the ability to collect, assimilate and analyse information
• Information Technology - IT management, and general technology that assist with both collection and analysis

Keep decisions rational
It is often considered that people are rational, free to make their own decisions and therefore behave according to the rational choice theory - making decisions by determining the likelihood of a potential outcome, the value of the outcome and then multiplying the two. However, in reality, there are some factors that affect decision making abilities and cause people to make irrational decisions.

Cognitive and personal biases can lead to decisions being affected and it is therefore important to be aware, to understand and to reduce (or eliminate) these.

Some common biases in decision making include:

• Selective search for evidence – the tendency to be willing to gather facts that support certain conclusions but disregard other facts that support different conclusions 
• Premature termination –  the tendency to accept the first alternative that looks like it might work 
• Cognitive inertia – the unwillingness to change existing thought patterns in the face of new circumstances 
• Selective perception – screening out information considered unimportant 
• Wishful thinking – a tendency to want to see things in a positive light 
• Recency – the tendency to place more attention on more recent information and either ignore or forget more distant information 
• Repetition bias – the willingness to believe what one has been told most often and by the greatest number of different sources 

Use a logical approach
Within decision making, managers must consider a structured approach that ensures:

• Objectives are first established 
• Objectives are then classified and prioritised by importance 
• Alternative actions are developed 
• The alternative(s) are evaluated against all the objectives 
• The alternative that is able to achieve all the objectives is the tentative decision 
• The tentative decision is evaluated for more possible consequences 
• The decisive actions are taken together with any additional actions required to prevent any adverse consequences from becoming problems and re-starting both problem analysis and decision making.

Building effective decision making steps
Managers do not work in isolation in decision making and are most effective when working with the team when implementing the logical approach above. This enables a collaborative approach to developing the following steps - increasing awareness of and overcoming any possible social, cognitive and cultural obstacles along the way.

1. Establish team ethos -  creating and nurturing the relationships, norms, and procedures that will influence how situations are understood and communicated 
2. Increase group perception -  recognising that a situation exists that needs a decision exists 
3. Interpret - identifying competing explanations for the situation and evaluating the drivers behind those interpretations 
4. Judgment - sorting various possible actions or responses and determining which is more justifiable 
5. Motivation - examining the competing commitments and then prioritising and committing to team values/needs over other personal or social values 
6. Action - following through with action that supports the more justified decision 
7. Reflect on action

So, does analysis paralysis prevent effective management? It does – but following these rules will help to overcome potential decision making obstacles and prevent this scourge of the well managed organisation.

Written by David Mathieson, a learning consultant at Capita Learning & Development.

Should managers operate in a pressure free environment?

One of the overarching responsibilities of the manager is to “get the job done” and creating the environment in which this work can be done effectively and efficiently is crucial.

But should this environment be pressure free?

Pressure free management? 

“Smooth seas do not make skilful sailors” the African proverb tells us. Managers want skilful sailors (effective staff) on their team – but there is a major difference between the pressure of gentle swells and the stress of tidal waves.

It is important that managers understand the difference between pressure and stress.

There is a difference between pressure and stress. Pressure can be positive and a motivating factor, and is often essential in a job. It can help individuals achieve goals and perform better.

Stress often describes both the events that are a source of pressure and the subjective feelings associated with external events and stimuli.

The Health & Safety Executive defines stress as: 'the adverse reaction a person has to excessive pressure or other types of demands placed upon them'.

This makes a distinction between 'pressure', which can be a positive state if managed correctly, and 'stress' which can be detrimental to health.

Is pressure good?
There is a direct link between performance and the appropriate levels of pressure – too little pressure results in boredom, too much results in exhaustion. Pressure must be appropriate not only in terms of volume of work but also on its longevity.

It is natural to feel under pressure at times, because of life and work demands. If the pressure is unrelenting and there is no time for recovery, negative health effects can result.

Who has the responsibility for maintaining pressure at the appropriate level?

In 1936 Kurt Lewin advocated that Behaviour is a function of both the person and the environment -  B= f  (P/E)

This clearly states that behaviour can be influenced internally and externally – the individual manages their own internal state and the manager influences the external state. So both have a part to play in creating and maintaining pressure that makes that skilful sailor.

The management responsibility
Managers must create an environment in which their people can cope. Coping means balancing the demands and pressures placed on an individual by the job requirements with the skills and knowledge required by the capable individual within that job – so well-designed, organised and managed work is vital.
It is essential that managers have an active role in facilitating and supporting staff to do their job effectively and to contribute to the success of their team and the organisation. So within the context of that role, managers can ensure they establish the following:

• Role – do people understand their role within the organisation and whether the organisation ensures that the person does not have conflicting roles? Are jobs designed to avoid conflicting demands and are the expectation of the job role clear? 
• Appropriate Demand - are the workload, work patterns, and the work environment appropriate?
• Control -  how much empowerment do people have in taking responsibility for the way they do their work 
• Support - what encouragement, support and resources are provided by the organisation, line managers and colleagues? Are people fully trained to undertake the demands of their job?
• Relationships - is a positive working environment promoted to avoid conflict and deal with unacceptable behaviour, identify or respond to issues of concern promptly and seek constructive solutions? 
• Changes - how are organisational changes managed and communicated - are people engaged in this process?
• Feedback – are there regular opportunities for feedback on performance e.g. regular 'one to one' meetings and team meetings?

The Employees responsibility
It is essential that managers ensure their people play an active role in maintaining pressure at the appropriate level by encouraging them to:

• maintain good communication with colleagues and line management structure 
• engage in discussion about  performance and act on feedback 
• raise issues of concern at an early stage and seek constructive support and solutions 
• make use of the support and training resources available 

So, should managers operate in a pressure free environment?

No – managers should operate in a pressure controlled, pressure maintained and pressure appropriate environment.

Written by David Mathieson, a learning consultant at Capita Learning & Development.

As a manager, do you know your impact or are you relying on your intentions?

“It is not enough that your designs, nay that your actions, are intrinsically good, you must take care they shall appear so.” (Henry Fielding).

An effective manager is one of the most significant and valuable assets that the team can possess and the very things the manager does and says could increase the effectiveness of the team - the “Hawthorne Effect” (the increase in productivity and effectiveness that occurs due to the impact of the motivational effect on the team as a result of the interest being shown in them) is prevalent.

Effective Management

But there is a danger that the manager can be the single biggest thing that gets in the way of people performing. In their actions and behaviours, managers - who are human after all - may mean well but it is worth considering that it is the impact of what the manager does, not the intention behind actions and behaviours that ultimately matters.

“Impact not intention” – this must be the manager’s mantra.
Consider the manager who:

• always books things in their teams diaries “to save them the effort” 
• filters communications for the team because “they are too busy to do it themselves” 
• takes on the frequent checking of work with an individual “because it shows I am interested” 
• insists on a weekly one to one with each of their team “because it shows I care”
• pays special attention to underperforming individuals and allows the good performers to carry on without managerial input “because they don’t need me” 

Sound familiar?

“But I meant well, it’s just what they want, what they need,” is the cry that goes up. But who decided that? Are these the best thing for the individuals involved to help them perform?  What are these actions really saying to the team?

How do you know whether your actions and behaviours when managing the team are the ones that are most effective for them?
These managers may be misguided but all want the same thing – for the individual to perform. But what do individuals need from their manager in order to perform?  Why not start by asking the individual?

Whilst it is important to remember that managing people is a collaborative approach and the team cannot decide in isolation what they get, in the managerial process of seeking to ensure that people are developed, the team is built and the task is achieved it is valuable to keep in mind that we are talking about the individuals job and their performance so their voice is crucial.

“Seek first to understand. Then to be understood” wrote Steven Covey.
For a manager, getting feedback on own performance is often ignored in favour of giving feedback on others. But reflect on how valuable it would be to know those behaviours and actions that support and reinforce and those that disturb, disrupt or damage.

There are a few things worth considering:

• Developing and establishing a 360 (or 180) degree feedback system
• Building in time at the end of performance meetings to discuss what you do that supports or gets in the way of your people
• Getting other managers to observe your performance and feedback
• Having effective performance discussions with own line manager, ensuring that objectives relating to the management of people are agreed, measured and fed back on  

Samuel Johnson said "Hell is paved with good intentions."
No manager wants to live in hell so create the opportunity and take the time to check your impact matches your intentions.

Written by David Mathieson, a learning consultant at Capita Learning & Development.

Are You As SMART As You Think You Are?

Each New Year we resolve to lose weight, quit smoking, or whatever. In the vast majority, these aspirations end in failure, but why does this happen?

The smart money, you might say, would probably be on a lack of goal setting. Without clear, measurable goals, the reasoning goes, we are doomed to fail. SMART goal setting has become such a staple of management training that it seems superfluous to remind you that the acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable (or Active), Realistic (or Relevant) and Time-bound.

Businesses and Government have enthusiastically embraced this goal-setting model and the world of work is now awash with SMART goals. But how effective are they?

First, a quick trawl through any random sample of business plans or appraisal documents will soon reveal that very few goals are SMART in practice. Setting a truly SMART goal is quite difficult; it takes time and thought to fashion something meaningful – time that managers rarely take, in my experience.

Second: the things that are most easily measured are likely to be of the least use, and vice versa. In practice, people often measure what they most easily can, rather than what they should. Thus, for example, we might know how many meetings staff members attended, but their effectiveness therein is less well understood.

Third: organisational emphasis on goals and targets understandably shifts management attention towards results; the monitoring of "how did they get there?" is often left undone, potentially leading to nasty surprises later, when managers find good results being underpinned by dubious practices.

Last: organisational metrics are often confined to management activities. I frequently ask my course delegates: "When was the last time you were measured on your coaching activities?". "Never" is the most common, depressing, answer. It seems many senior managements, despite espousing them in principle, routinely ignore a whole raft of leadership activities for measurement purposes, filling managers' schedules by default with management activities, and thus constraining time available for leadership.

And so, as we embark upon 2012, my question to you is simple: are you as SMART at work as you think you are? 

By David Soloman, Learning Consultant, Capita Learning and Development

What motivates employees?

We are not as easy to manipulate, nor as predictable, as you’d think. An MIT survey calls into question the reward/punishment models that most organizations have been built on...

What the study showed was that, for simple, algorithmic, mechanical tasks, financial rewards work. But once the task moves above a rudimentary cognitive skill level, then financial rewards actually… backfire.




How can that be?

A study was done at MIT, where students were given various tasks ranging from memorizing digits, solving word puzzles to throwing a ball through a hoop. To incentivise the students, they gave them three levels of rewards similar to a typical motivation scheme within an organization. Thus if they reached level 1, they would get x, if they reached level 2 they get y, etc. What the study showed was that, for simple, algorithmic, mechanical tasks, financial rewards work. But once the task moves above a rudimentary cognitive skill level, then financial rewards actually… backfire.

Once you get above rudimentary cognitive skill, it's the other way around. For simple straight forward tasks, like 'if you do this then you get that', financial rewards deliver outstanding results. But when a task gets more complicated, when it requires conceptual, creative thinking, then those incentives don't work. If you don't pay people enough they won't be motivated. What this proves is that money is a motivator, yes. But the trick is to pay people enough so that money no longer matters, and people think about work, not cash.

What then emerged was a new purpose-driven motive based on three key factors: autonomy (get out of their way), mastery (people want to get better at tasks), and purpose (people want to make a contribution). Autonomy means to be self-directed. An Australian software company, Atlassian, told their developers that they can work on anything with whomever they want for 24 hours every quarter.  All they have to do is show the results to the company at the end of the 24 hours. Afterwards everyone got together with refreshments and discussed what they worked on. That one day of pure undiluted autonomy has lead to software fixes, various ideas for new projects and a culture based on innovation.

Mastery is the urge to get better at stuff. This is why people play musical instruments at the weekend. Why would people spend time on something that is not going to lead to any financial rewards or finding a partner?  Because it's fun and you can get better at it which is satisfying. Take for example companies like Linux, Apache and Wikipedia. Various people around the world who have satisfying, challenging jobs which pay them a good salary, spend their spare time contributing to Linux or Wikipedia. But why are they doing this? Because it's challenging, it involves mastery and they get to make a contribution to the world.

More and more organisations across the world are realising that they need to have a purpose. Partly because it makes acquiring new talent easier and it makes coming to work easier. When the profit motive becomes unmoored from the purpose motive, bad things happen. Companies who are flourishing are animated by this purpose. Take Skype as an example: 'Our goal is to be disruptive, but in the cause of making this world a better place'. We need to have purpose in order to get up in the morning and go to work. The science indicates that we care about mastery, and we want to be self-directed. Based on these findings we can build better organisations, which in turn will also lead to making our world just a little bit better. 

Traditional management styles are great when what you are after is compliance. But in this new, purpose-driven world, you need to enable staff to do what they do well – and here, self-direction works best.

Mistakes to Avoid When Giving Employee Feedback

Feedback from managers is essential in engaging employees in their role and it is a part of a manager’s responsibility in developing (and retaining) employees. However, all too often, managers will fail to give feedback fearing that they will upset employees or change the status quo of the team.

Good managers consider feedback as an ongoing process and will communicate with employees about their performance at regular intervals, commenting on both the positive and negative aspects and producing an action plan to correct issues as and when they appear.

This article examines some of the most common mistakes that managers make when providing employees with feedback:

Waiting until the annual appraisal before giving feedback

Feedback should be seen as an ongoing process. Providing feedback (positive and negative) at regular intervals throughout the year allows employees a chance to correct any performance issues ahead of an annual appraisal. Waiting until the annual appraisal to give feedback is counter-productive as employees may come to fear the occasion and additionally, there is a chance that small problems are not dealt with initially resulting in them growing into much bigger issues.

Adopting the “Feedback Sandwich” style

A “feedback sandwich” is initiated by issuing praise, softening any issues that follow in the feedback giving stage. The conversation is concluded with more praise or a positive outlook. This approach is not to make the receiver feel good about the conversation but rather to help the manager to deliver difficult feedback and to reduce the chances of a defensive or confrontational reaction.

Using this technique often will result in employees getting to know that immediately following praise comes criticism and whilst they are still focused on the negative the praise is not effectively communicated.

Not communicating expectations

If employees do not know what they are expected to achieve from the start they are more likely to be confused when they do receive feedback. Ensure that employees receive realistic and achievable performance targets and that the feedback correlates with the performance areas that the employee is being graded on.

Fear of addressing the actual cause of poor performance

Many managers simply do not like providing employees with honest feedback for fear of upsetting them, instead opting to “sugar-coat” negative feedback which ends up confusing employees. To be an effective leader providing constructive and accurate feedback is essential, adopting a discussion-based collaborative style will ensure that employees are given time to talk about their own experiences in relation to the managers expectations allowing the employee to engage in open and honest communication, making the entire experience more positive.

Lack of preparation

Many managers do not spend enough time preparing for the feedback conversation. Both parties should come prepared and start off by reviewing the expectations set at the previous meeting, additionally, managers should document employee’s accomplishments and areas of poor performance throughout the year so they have an accurate record to refer to.

These are just some of the common mistakes that you need to avoid when giving employees feedback, if you have any other mistakes the managers make, please share them with us on Twitter or by adding a comment below.